Best-selling author Jeff VanderMeer returns to city

Monday

Jul 7, 2014 at 3:06 PM

New York Times best-selling author Jeff VanderMeer returns to Spartanburg on the heels of the publication of the first two books in his widely successful Southern Reach trilogy, a literary speculative fiction thriller that has been making waves all across the country—and across the world—with book deals now in 16 countries and a movie deal with Paramount Pictures/Scott Rudin Productions.

By JAMES YEHFor 85-26.com

New York Times best-selling author Jeff VanderMeer returns to Spartanburg on the heels of the publication of the first two books in his widely successful Southern Reach trilogy, a literary speculative fiction thriller that has been making waves all across the country—and across the world—with book deals now in 16 countries and a movie deal with Paramount Pictures/Scott Rudin Productions. Before embarking on his whirlwind tour — which includes stops at Quail Ridge Books and Music in Raleigh on Thursday, Malaprop's Bookstore/Café in Asheville, N.C. on Saturday, as well as two weeks in California and several weeks in the U.K. — VanderMeer comes to Spartanburg on Wednesday at 7 p.m. for a free, public reading at Hub City Bookshop. VanderMeer will be previewing passages from the third and final novel of the trilogy, "Acceptance," not due out until September. One lucky attendee will be chosen to receive a free copy.The first book in VanderMeer's trilogy, titled "Annihilation" and published in February, follows an all-female team of scientists who have been sent to investigate a series of mysterious occurrences in a menacing, Florida-inspired "transitional" environment known as Area X, where one might encounter a mysterious groaning swamp, a tunnel that is also a tower, or a dolphin with the unsettling gaze of a human being. "For 'Annihilation' I had this very strange nightmare dream," VanderMeer said in a phone interview, "and when I woke up in the morning, I had basically the first 10,000 words just kind of pour out of me. 'Annihilation' came extremely easily to me because it was the first time I've written about a real place — the setting is based on a place in North Florida, where I hike. There's no physical detail in there that's not something I haven't observed firsthand.""Not the freaky stuff," he clarified, laughing.Asked what it is about a place he finds creatively inspiring, VanderMeer said, "You could call it a sense of isolation or desolation that I like, but it's not really that. It's a sense of aloneness, feeling like you're really somewhere out beyond."Though it can serve as a springboard for fiction, VanderMeer maintained that a sense of place alone isn't enough to make good writing. "I don't really believe that place can be divorced from characterization," he said. "Even (when writing in the) third-person, you're still seeing what that person would see. When I teach writing, I give an example. If you're in a war situation, there's certain kinds of gunfire that you might not even register. Whereas if you hear that and you're walking down the street in your average city, you're not going to ignore that unless it's something you frequently encounter."Although he was born in the Fiji Islands and now lives in Tallahassee, Fla., with his wife, Ann VanderMeer — a Hugo Award-winning editor and publisher in her own right — VanderMeer is no stranger to the Upstate. For the past seven summers, he has taught and served as the assistant director of Shared Worlds, an interdisciplinary creative writing camp for teenagers, which takes place this summer from Sunday through July 26 at Wofford College.The literary couple is looking forward to their time in Spartanburg, where VanderMeer said it's "a little like a home away from home." "We like the Thai restaurant on the corner, (Lime Leaf). We always like walking around the downtown. We love Hub City (Bookshop), and I'm not just saying that. We've seen bookstores all over the world, and it's one of the best."When asked to describe his typical day writing, VanderMeer said that he wasn't "necessarily one of those 'write a thousand words a day' kind of guys.""I believe strongly you have to have time to think about what you're going to write," VanderMeer said. "Usually, for me, a novel will start with me spending a couple months thinking about it, not really writing anything down except fragments that come to me. After a certain point, it hits critical mass. When I get to those scenes, it's more like improv. It's like if you had a director on a movie set, who knew what scenes he had to shoot structurally, but when it came time to shoot them, he just said to the actors, 'OK, here's your basic motivation. You should think (what would) you would do at this moment.' The discovery usually comes for me from what the characters unexpectedly say or do.""The point of writing fiction is not efficiency," VanderMeer added with a laugh. "It's to discover the right things along the way and have the right layering and depth to them."